This could be seen as cliche, but that won’t stop me! Sharing a view of Scotland in all its glory. You get to see this sort of view everywhere you turn when you explore the lochs and the highlands of Scotland.

You can find lots of Scotland on my blog – but that’s not all there is – I hope you browse a few selections and enjoy my meanderings. Always pleased to meet you!

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This seems particularly pertinent and moving at a time when the world is watching the displacement of people from all over the globe. Perhaps we need to ritualise a little more, eat together, work beside one another to feel we are all living the same history.

Among the Ku Waru people of New Guinea, for example, children become kin through an essential substance called kopong (grease) which originates in the soil. The Ku Waru call both father’s sperm and mother’s milk kopong, and it is through these two sources that conception of a child is said to occur. However, sweet potatoes and pork also contain kopong, and when people share these foods, the same fundamental connection emerges between them as does between parent and child: they become kin. The offspring of two Ku Waru brothers, Sahlins says, are ‘as much related because they were sustained by the same soil as because their fathers were born of the same parents’. The children of immigrants to the community become full kin with those who share no genes with them by carrying out socially inscribed practices around kopong.

Barbara J King is professor of anthropology at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia

Walking – one step in front of another, and the trees bend one way then another , whispering , living lives of mystery beneath my feet. I love the dialogue I have with these forebears. I cannot remember a time when I didn’t notice the living companions growing beside me, I only remember how bleak it was when I lived for a time in a concrete jungle, because it was the cheapest housing.

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Sadly I cannot make this event http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/2014/10/20/stoic-week-2014-everything-you-need-to-know/ but we live in a virtual world for which I am grateful. Nevertheless, it may be worth consideration if you are in London this week. If not there is always the possibility of downloading the book free until the end of this week, just go to the site with the link above.

I have been drawn to Marcus Aurelius and Seneca amongst other classical authors and they have informed my life since I was a teenager. The interest in Stoicism will be timeless, and the blog is an interesting read. I am not sure how faithfully I would follow any formal approach to practice as I have been averse to that mode of instruction since forever. I am more likely to dip into a broad spectrum of source material and reflect as and when my mind thinks fit. But I would have been a frequent visitor to the porch in the central market of Athens when Zeno was hanging around.

If you click on the image below, there are a few treasures worth collecting.

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Walking the dogs this morning, I was considering the complexity that belonging to the human race involves. I am feeling ‘smooth’ this morning, an expression used by our housemate over breakfast and one that sums up my current frame of mind. Smooth. That may not appear that surprising to any of you readers out there ( are there any?) but it is. Because all of my life I have lived with a realism that results in a constant battle of dealing with an imperfect world. I tend not to catastrophize events in my own life, which is a plus, but the negative aspect is that any joy is tempered by the knowledge that somewhere a war is being fought, or torture is continuing to be applied in areas of the globe I know nothing about. So it is.

It was serendipitous then, that I ventured upon this short video by Cognitive, which expresses so well the importance of realism in everyday life, in the politics , in the economics of living in the 21st century. We have no excuse for not looking clearly at the challenges we face as a species, and today the Rosetta space mission is attempting to land Philae on a comet; once settled, Philae will begin to reveal secrets about the solar system and maybe even give us clues about the origin of life. We have to hold close the hope that is the catalyst to any investigative project, and while we hold it, simultanteously understand the difficulties and hazards that are the barriers to success. Our actions will govern the sustainability of ourselves and our co-habitants of the planet, and it is why we need to be realists in our own endeavours, whether that be managing a family, directing a company, guiding a country, or running a space mission. Realism has to lead to fortitude, and hope has to be our guide.